Mans brown ale????

[Paddy1989]

Hi all my dad just told me about an ale called mans brown ale he used to drink in the 80s has anyone got a recipie or know of one. Cheers. Paddy.

[Beer O'Clock]

Hi all my dad just told me about an ale called Manns Brown Ale he used to drink in the 80s has anyone got a recipie or know of one. Cheers. Paddy.

Fixt

[Blackaddler]

Hi all my dad just told me about an ale called mans brown ale he used to drink in the 80s has anyone got a recipie or know of one. Cheers. Paddy.

Manns Brown Ale is still available.

My style of beer normally, but I had a bottle or two a couple of years back, and it was a bit too sweet for my liking.

[jimp2003]

I picked up a bottle of this in Asda last week for £1 as I am thinking about brewing a low ABV beer (Manns is only 2.8%). It says that it is brewed to the historical recipe but gives no details of ingredients.

I can tell you is that it is sweet and watery and to my taste bloody awful! Maybe it was better back in the day served on cask. I am sure that whatever you brew it will be better than the bottled version is today.

I am pretty sure that there is some chocolate malt in there along with pale malt and a bit of crystal. No Idea about hops as they did not stand out at all but I would probably bitter it to about 20 IBUs with some at 60mins and some at 30 and no aroma additions and see what happens.

[Paddy1989]

Ok haha cheers lads maby ill leave it then the old boys minds going obviously haha. Cheers paddy.

[jimp2003]

Update: There is a recipe on this thread: viewtopic.php?t=11857 - seems I was wrong about the ingredients.

Its an extract recipe but you could convert the extract to grain fairly easily and you could scale it up from the 15l.

I would be tempted to leave out the caramel and instead run off a couple of litres of the first runnings into a pan and carefully boil it down to a syrup before adding to the kettle. Don't think I would bother with the saccharine tablets either.

Also I would go for Windsor yeast or something with similar characteristics (low attenuation and good flavour)

[Invalid Stout]

I can tell you is that it is sweet and watery and to my taste bloody awful! Maybe it was better back in the day served on cask. I am sure that whatever you brew it will be better than the bottled version is today.

When brown ale was popular it was almost invariably bottled, so wouldn’t have been served from cask anyway. I kind of doubt that it used to be any better than it is now – it was always a sweet, uncomplicated beer. I rather like it but even £1 is expensive for it IMO.

[Dennis King]

remember it in the 70s, it was shit.

[orlando]

Correct

[IPA]

I am old enough to remember the brewers Mann Crossman and Paulin before they were taken over by Watney. Certainly in London at that time it was still the custom to mix two different beers to make up a pint that tasted better than the cheapest of the two. Very similiar to the brewers who mixed a mature ale with a younger brew, called bringing forward. Newcastle Brown is an example of this. ie brown and mild, mild and bitter, Bulldog and bitter, Ramrod and bitter etc. To get back to the question the recipe can be found on page 70 of Dave Line's BBLTYB. If you are an all grain brewer substitute the malt extract for the appropriate amount of pale malt and the saccharine tablets for 350gr of lactose. The recipe is for 15L so if you are brewing 25L divide all the engredients by three and then multiply by five. I don't remember it tasting that bad, you either like this type of beer or not. Reminds me of the Hobgoblin advert. What's up Lager Boy? Frightened of the Dark!

[oldbloke]

I quite like Mann's. It also has the advantage that it's only 2.8%, so if you drink slow, you can still drive.

When I first started going to pubs, in 1970, brown was widely available on draught. Where I grew up it was almost all Courage's.

[Beer O'Clock]

Mann's Brown was my first introduction to ale when I first visited this fair country in the mid-70s. I'd never tasted British ale until then and it was a surprise. Sweet, bold in style and easy to poor down one's gullet.

After getting a taste for ale in the late-80s/early-90s, I tried it again in a wave of nostalgia. God, it was vile. All sweet malt and no character.

There are far better versions that are actually worth emulating. Leave this one to the books of "nice memories".